photoshop cs2, ***?

[celtbhoy]

right,,i have posted this on several sites and got nowhere,so im pinning all my hopes on you guys!!
i have ps-5.0 and cs2,i am a total learner...i need to get a 'WALKTHROUGH'
i have tried tutorials, but they all seem complicated!
i think that if i work out the layer thing i might be ok....i know what they are,but don't know how to use them,or how to copy layers from my hdd/files.
sorry to sound dumb,but keep it simple... CB.

[Go The Power]

Hello again Celtboy

What do you want tutorial on? Do you want one on layers?
If so try these:
http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/layers/intro.htm
http://www.webreference.com/graphics/column32/
http://iit.bloomu.edu/vthc/Photoshop/Basics/layers.htm

Here is a good one to learn some basics:
http://iit.bloomu.edu/vthc/Photoshop.../interface.htm

[celtbhoy]

Originally Posted by Go The Power

Hello again Celtboy

What do you want tutorial on? Do you want one on layers?
If so try these:
http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/layers/intro.htm
http://www.webreference.com/graphics/column32/
http://iit.bloomu.edu/vthc/Photoshop/Basics/layers.htm

Here is a good one to learn some basics:
http://iit.bloomu.edu/vthc/Photoshop.../interface.htm

,yet again you come to my rescue! in middle of reading,will let you know l8r.. thanks

[guiblum]

Hi, celtbhoy, here is a short note to get you started.

The concept of layers in Photoshop causes confusion with a lot of "newbies" to the program, but it is simple to grasp if you

think of it in terms of the cartoon animator.
He will have a background of some sort and each character, and each individual movement of each character, drawn on a

seperate sheet of clear plastic. Each sheet is then photographed, and the whole strung together to make the animation.

The idea is of course that each sheet can be seperately moved up and down the stack, taken out, put back in,moved about,

and/or edited individually and without affecting the other sheets.
In Photoshop, each layer represents one of these sheets, and like these sheets can be edited individually without affecting

the rest of them.

How then to create the layers?

For the moment, forget about making a coloured background and simply open Photoshop and have the tools box, the

layers pallette and nothing else visible. The screen and the layers pallette are empty.
Navigate to whereever you store your images and open one into Photoshop.
You now have an image on your screen, the tools and the layers, and in your layers is a thumbnail of the image. The word

thumbnail is important, as you cannot edit a thumbnail in any way, you can only edit or work on the actual image.

Now, navigate to your pics again and open a second image. You now have two images on your screen, but the thumbnail in

layers of your first image has disappeared and has been replaced with a thumbnail of your second image.

Now, look at the two images on the screen, not in layers, and notice the difference. The title bar on the first image is now

"greyed out", whilst that on the second is bright and cheerful. What this is is the concept of "active" and "inactive" images,

greyed out being inactive and bright being active.
You can have only one active image at a time, the other, or others if you have opened more than two, are all inactive and

the layers pallette will show the thumbnail of the active image only.
You can toggle the images between active and inactive by simply clicking on the title bar of the inactive one, this will make

it active, then reverse that to go back to the other image and as you click and toggle between images, so the thumbnail in

the layers will toggle back and forward as appropriate to show the thumbnail of the active image and hide the thumbnail of

all the inactive ones.

It will be apparent from this that as you open images to collage/montage, and you click on each different one to drag and

drop or select, each will become active/inactive/active for a moment,the appropriate thumbnail will appear in layers and then

change as you click/drag the next image or bit of an image.
This can give the impression that you are somehow creating thumbnails all over the place, but you are not. Layers are

merely displaying the one appropriate to the then current active image.

Now, to the fun. To put one image onto another image to form a collage.
Have you two images open on the screen, one will be active, the other inactive. Click on the one you want as a background,

it will become active and it's thumbnail will be in layers as a "background layer".
Do not, repeat not, make a new layer.
Click then on the image that you wish to superimpose onto that background. That image will become active, will show it's

thumbnail in layers and the "original" background layer will apparently disappear. Don't worry, it is still there.
Now, go to your toolbox and select the move tool, (the wee arrow thingy up near the top), the cursor will change to the

same tool icon. Click that in the centre of your active image that you wish to superimpose, and drag that image on top of

the background image.
Important, drag it onto the image not into the layers pallette.
When that dragged image hits the background image, the background image will automatically become the active image,

the thumbnail for the background will appear in layers and you should also get a thumbnail of the dragged image on it's own

layer immediately above the background layer.

You can now click again on the title bar of the newly superimposed image (image, not layer),it will momentarily become

active and display it's thumbnail in layers, click on the red cross top right hand corner to make it disappear, this will leave

only your newly collaged imaged open and thus active and it's thumbnail with the new second layer will reappear, then

navigate to you pics., and select the next for collaging. When that opens on the screen, it will become active, you collage

will become inactive, click drag and drop onto the collage image (image not layer) and the process will repaet itself.

Try that first and see how you get on. Let me know, and when you are happy with the concepts of why layers, active and

inactive images and dragging and dropping, we will go onto the next step os creating a background and editing/moving

individual layers.

Right oh., we have got the idea of dragging and dropping images onto each other to form a collage/montage, and we have

seen how this affects the layers pallette and the way the layers thumbnails toggle about in line with the active and inactive

images.
Your layers at this point within your collage may not be in the right order and/or they may require some sort of editing on

colour or tonal balance, size, position or whatever and so we will now have a look at working with layers.

First, however, let us look at saving an image. It would be a great pity if you did all the hard work of building a collage just to

lose it all by virtue of another power cut, so it is a good idea to save what you have done to date, but in a manner which will

preserve and maintain your layers and make them available for edit the next time you open the collaged image.
This is simple. Have your image active, all layers showing in the layers pallette, go to menu bar>file>save as (not save but

"save as") , in the dialogue box that opens, nominate a location to store the image, give it a title and save it as either a psd

(photoshop document) or as a tif (tiff-transferrable image file format).
Saving in either of these, but these only, will preserve the layers. You can now close the image if you want, switch off the

computer, go and cut the grass and reopen in a weeks time or whenever, browse to and open your image and it will

reappear with all the layers in their full glory and ready for the next stage.
Only after you are satisfied that you have completed your work and that no further editing is required, would you go to menu

bar>layers>flatten image to "stick" all the layers together, then save as jpeg or whatever you wish. Subsequent to that, the

layers are not available to you.

Now to working with your layers. Open your collaged image, the toolbox and the layers pallette and you will have one active

image and a stack of layers in the pallette. This stack shows the thumbnails of all the images within your collage, in the

same order as they are showing in the collage. In other words, the foremost image in the collage is at the top of the layers

stack etc.

Have a look at the layers pallette, study the thumbnails and you will see that one and only one thumbnail has a coloured

box to it's right, a box the same size and shape as the thumbnail and with the same colour block as the title bar on your

image. That is the "active" layer, the rest are "inactive" ( the box is there but it has no colour) and it is only the active layer

that you can work on.
If the highlighted active layer is not the one you wish to work on, put your cursor in the identical box on your chosen layer

and click. That layer will then become coloured and active and the previous will go inactive.

Editing these layers can now be divided into two broad areas, (1) moving them into the correct position and (2) correcting

anything else such as tonal balance, hue and saturation, putting in a gradient, rubbing out etc.
Let us look first at moving around.

When you made your collage by dragging and dropping, you may not have got the positioning or the sequence of the

superimposed images correct or to you satisfaction so they may require moving about.
If it is a simple move around, highlight the appropriate layer to make it active, select your move tool from the tool box, click

on the superimposed image in you collage and, well, move it to whereever you want.
If your layers and thus the superimposed images are not in the correct sequence, for instance that which is at the top of the

layers stack and thus at the front of the collage you may wish to go to the back or the middle, first select that layer in the

layers pallette to make it active, then go menu bar>layers>arrange and a fly out dialogue will open where you have the

options to send to back, sent to front if you want to move from one end of the stack to the other or to send forward or send

back which will make the move one layer at a time.
You can achieve the same effect as this by simply going to the layers pallette, activate the appropriate layer and, in the

layers pallette, drag and drop that layer up and down the stack until all are in the correct position.

Now, other edits.

There are two forms of these edits available to you, "adjustment layers" and "layer adjustments", and we start them both by

highlighting the appropriate layer that we wish to work on and making it active.
To apply an adjustment layer, go to the bottom of the layers pallette and put your cursor on the icon which looks like a have

black/half white circle, click and a dialogue box will open asking you what sort of adjustment you want to make. Follow

your nose and click on that which appropriate to your intention.
The important thing to remember about using this adjustment layer, is that it will create a new layer in the stack, attached

to your highlighted active layer but that it will affect all other layers below it in the stack.
Read that again, an adjustment layer will affect not only the layer to which it is attached, but also to all the layers below it

in the stack.

You may not wish that, you may wish to apply adjustments to one layer only.
Ok, click on the appropriate layer to make it active then go to menu bar>image>adjustments. The same form of fly out

dialogue as in the adjustment layer device above will appear, select what you wish to do and proceed, but this time in the

knowledge that by accessing the adjustments through this route, they will be applied only to your active layer.

Note that all through this process, the background layer is not normally an editable layer, but you can make it so by putting

your cursor in the box to the right of the thumbnail and double clicking. The name of the thumbnail will change from

"background" to "layer 0" and will become editable.


Does that help ??, or does it put you to sleep